Larry Speakes

Larry Speakes (13 September 1939-10 January 2014) was White House Press Secretary from 30 March 1981 to 1 February 1987, succeeding James Brady and preceding Marlin Fitzwalter.

Biography
Larry Speakes was born in Cleveland, Mississippi in 1939, and he began his journalism career in the 1960s, becoming spokesman for the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary in 1968 as press secretary to Senator James Eastland. In 1974, he switched his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican, and he served as Bob Dole's press secretary during his unsuccessful vice-presidential bid in 1976. In 1980, he worked on Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign, and he served as acting White House Press Secretary from 1981 to 1987, as the White House Press Secretary James Brady had been paralyzed in an assassination attempt on the President. He came to embody Reagan's administration's slow response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic when he laughed at questions about the disease, and he also provoked controversy when he revealed that he had fabricated quotes attributed to Reagan due to his lackluster quotes and Mikhail Gorbachev's comparatively highly quotable remarks at the Geneva Summit of 1985. Speakes was seen as too quick to answer questions by George H.W. Bush, and he did not continue his service under Bush. He died in 2014.